Ethics and the Subject

Front Cover
Karl Simms
Rodopi, 1997 - History - 286 pages
This volume contains nineteen essays -- eighteen here presented for the first time -- exploring the question of subjectivity as seen from an ethical perspective. Part I concerns the phenomenological development of Cartesianism and the concept of narrative identity, with essays addressing Levinas' idea of the Other, Ricoeur's Christianisation of Levinas, and Dennet's concept of folk psychology. Part II concerns the experience of reading ethically, as mediated through genealogy and psychoanalysis. The essays address the discourses of philosophy, psychoanalysis, film and literature, and are informed by Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault and Lacan among others. The volume will interest philosophers and critical theorists. Karl Simms provides comprehensive introductions to each of the parts, making the book accessible to informed general readers with an interest in cultural studies.

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Contents

Jonathan Rée
17
Ordinary Language and its Enigmatic Ground
29
Robin Durie
43
The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
53
The Narrative Basis of SelfDevelopment
61
Historical Narrative and the Abstract Subject
77
Narrative Identity in Ricoeurs Oneself as Another
85
Introduction
99
vi
165
Reflections on the SelfReflexive Signifying Chain
173
Excessive Display of the Human Form in the Horror Film
189
Paradigms of Desire in Pornography
203
Versions of the Feminine Subject in Charlotte Brontës Villette
217
The Embracing Language of Wallace Stevens
227
To create and in creating live a being more intense
237
Defoe and the Psychotic Subject
245

Genealogical Methods
127
Technologies of the Self
139
Looking Up the Adolescent in Freuds Index
147
Two Walks
157
Bibliography
253
Name Index
271
Subject Index
277
Copyright

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Page 18 - Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible...
Page 23 - The world as I found it", I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made.